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Husky gridders get help ... from ski team

Three games into the season and with their conference season looming, the Mammoth Huskies (2-1) have given themselves an infusion of athletic talent.

In a move that is unparalleled in Head Coach Tom Gault’s long tenure at the helm, six players walked on two weeks ago, asking for spots on the team.

All of them are from the Mammoth Mountain Ski Team, and some could see game action tonight when the Huskies visit their longtime rivals, the Bishop Broncos (3-0).

“I think it’s so cool that it’s crossed over,” said Laurey Carlson, whose son Kirk was among the half-dozen skier/snowboarder/freeride athletes to approach Gault about the idea.

“We had a couple of boys who played for us two years ago,” Gault said in an interview after one of the team’s practices at Gault/McClure Stadium earlier this week, “and they didn’t play last year. So they came out and asked if they could try out. I told them that they’d missed a lot of work, but that I was good with the idea.”

But it really wasn’t up to Gault, he said.

The question was if the rest of the team was good with it. After all, they’d been on the field since August, with two-a-day practices and three games under their belts. They’d done a lot of work.

“So I asked the rest of the team,” Gault said. “After all, the team belongs to them and the rest of the guys, and they said yes.”

As a result, the varsity roster inflated by six – a big deal to a team that had just 20 players on the roster.
The ski team members are running back Ty Barbo, backs Carson Philbrook and Bryce Eller, lineman Clint Kasten, the aforementioned Carlson, at end, and Keeler Johnston, also an end.

Barbo is on the MMST snowboard team, while Kasten is on the freeride team.

Only Eller is ineligible for tonight’s game, owing to a lack of practice time.